Thoreau in Italy

Related poetry:

1. Thoreau's Flute We sighing said, “Our Pan is dead; His pipe hangs mute beside the river Around it wistful sunbeams quiver, But Music’s airy voice is fled. Spring mourns as for untimely frost; The bluebird chants a requiem; The willow-blossom waits for him; The Genius of the wood is lost.” Then from the flute, untouched by hands, […]...
2. Bound Home to Mount Song The limpid river, past its bushes Running slowly as my chariot, Becomes a fellow voyager Returning home with the evening birds. A ruined city-wall overtops an old ferry, Autumn sunset floods the peaks. …Far away, beside Mount Song, I shall close my door and be at peace....
3. The Englishman In Italy (PIANO DI SORRENTO.) Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one, Sit here by my side, On my knees put up both little feet! I was sure, if I tried, I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco; Now, open your eyes – Let me keep you amused till he vanish In black from the skies, With telling […]...
4. Sonnet On Approaching Italy I reached the Alps: the soul within me burned, Italia, my Italia, at thy name: And when from out the mountain’s heart I came And saw the land for which my life had yearned, I laughed as one who some great prize had earned: And musing on the marvel of thy fame I watched the […]...
5. To Flowers From Italy in Winter Sunned in the South, and here to-day; If all organic things Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say, What are your ponderings? How can you stay, nor vanish quite From this bleak spot of thorn, And birch, and fir, and frozen white Expanse of the forlorn? Frail luckless exiles hither brought! Your dust will not […]...
6. Nurse's Song (Innocence) When voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still Then come home my children the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise Come come leave off play, and let us away Till […]...
7. Winter Landscape The three men coming down the winter hill In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds At heel, through the arrangement of the trees, Past the five figures at the burning straw, Returning cold and silent to their town, Returning to the drifted snow, the rink Lively with children, to the older men, […]...
8. "Heaven" has different Signs to me “Heaven” has different Signs to me Sometimes, I think that Noon Is but a symbol of the Place And when again, at Dawn, A mighty look runs round the World And settles in the Hills An Awe if it should be like that Upon the Ignorance steals The Orchard, when the Sun is on The […]...
9. I Am There I come from there and remember, I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother And a house with many windows, I have brothers, friends and a prison. I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away. I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass. I have a moon […]...
10. Give Me Back My Rags #11 I’ve wiped your face off my face Ripped your shadow off my shadow Leveled the hills in you Turned your plains into hills Set your seasons quarreling Turned all the ends of the world from you Wrapped the path of my life around you My impenetrable my impossible path Just try to meet me now...
11. On Being A Woman Why is it, when I am in Rome, I’d give an eye to be at home, But when on native earth I be, My soul is sick for Italy? And why with you, my love, my lord, Am I spectacularly bored, Yet do you up and leave me – then I scream to have you […]...
12. 223. Song-The Chevalier's Lament THE SMALL birds rejoice in the green leaves returning, The murmuring streamlet winds clear thro’ the vale; The primroses blow in the dews of the morning, And wild scatter’d cowslips bedeck the green dale: But what can give pleasure, or what can seem fair, When the lingering moments are numbered by care? No birds sweetly […]...
13. Azure and Gold April had covered the hills With flickering yellows and reds, The sparkle and coolness of snow Was blown from the mountain beds. Across a deep-sunken stream The pink of blossoming trees, And from windless appleblooms The humming of many bees. The air was of rose and gold Arabesqued with the song of birds Who, swinging […]...
14. Summer Nights Lamoni, Iowa The factory siren tells workers time to go home Tells them the evening has begun. When living with the tall man Whom I didn’t love, I would wander The streets, dreaming of Italy. Trekking the handful of avenues With him, he would say look there Between pink cobblestones, There’s manure like mortar. The […]...
15. The Floods The rain it rains without a stay In the hills above us, in the hills; And presently the floods break way Whose strength is in the hills. The trees they suck from every cloud, The valley brooks they roar aloud Bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands, Lowlands under the hills! The first wood down is sere […]...
16. Tourist To Italy a random tour I took to crown my education, Returning relatively poor In purse yet rich in conversation. Old Rome put up a jolly show, But I am not a classic purist, Preferring to Mike Angelo The slim stems of a lady tourist. Venice, they say, was built on piles; I used to […]...
17. Words, Wide Night Somewhere on the other side of this wide night And the distance between us, I am thinking of you. The room is turning slowly away from the moon. This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say It is sad? In one of the tenses I singing An impossible song of desire that […]...
18. The Bonnie Sidlaw Hills Bonnie Clara, will you go to the bonnie Sidlaw hills And pu’ the blooming heather, and drink from their rills? There the cranberries among the heather grow, Believe me, dear Clara, as black as the crow. Chorus Then, bonnie Clara, will you go And wander with me to and fro? And with joy our hearts […]...
19. Blind It’s okay if the world goes with Venetian; Who cares what Italians don’t see? Or with Man’s Bluff (a temporary problem Healed by shrieks and cheating) or with date: Three hours of squirming repaid by laughs for years. But when an old woman, already deaf, Wakes from a night of headaches, and the dark Won’t […]...
20. Indian Summer A soft veil dims the tender skies, And half conceals from pensive eyes The bronzing tokens of the fall; A calmness broods upon the hills, And summer’s parting dream distills A charm of silence over all. The stacks of corn, in brown array, Stand waiting through the placid day, Like tattered wigwams on the plain; […]...
21. A Song Of Suicide Deeming that I were better dead, “How shall I kill myself?” I said. Thus mooning by the river Seine I sought extinction without pain, When on a bridge I saw a flash Of lingerie and heard a splash. . . So as I am a swimmer stout I plunged and pulled the poor wretch out. […]...
22. Sestina I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow, To the short day and to the whitening hills, When the colour is all lost from the grass, Though my desire will not lose its green, So rooted is it in this hardest stone, That speaks and feels as though it were a woman. And […]...
23. The Speed Of Light So gradual in those summers was the going of the age it seemed that the long days setting out When the stars faded over the mountains were not leaving us even as the birds woke in full song and the dew Glittered in the webs it appeared then that the clear morning opening into the […]...
24. MY PERFECT ROSE At ten she came to me, three years ago, There was ‘something between us’ even then; Watching her write like Eliot every day, Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat, Write a poem in Greek three weeks from learning the alphabet; Then translate it as ‘Sun on a tomb, gold place, small sacred horse’. […]...
25. Keepsake Mill Over the borders, a sin without pardon, Breaking the branches and crawling below, Out through the breach in the wall of the garden, Down by the banks of the river we go. Here is a mill with the humming of thunder, Here is the weir with the wonder of foam, Here is the sluice with […]...
26. The Balance Wheel Where I waved at the sky And waited your love through a February sleep, I saw birds swinging in, watched them multiply Into a tree, weaving on a branch, cradling a keep In the arms of April sprung from the south to occupy This slow lap of land, like cogs of some balance wheel. I […]...
27. Song in a Minor Key There’s a place I know where the birds swing low, And wayward vines go roaming, Where the lilacs nod, and a marble god Is pale, in scented gloaming. And at sunset there comes a lady fair Whose eyes are deep with yearning. By an old, old gate does the lady wait Her own true love’s […]...
28. The Clock's Clear Voice Into The Clearer Air THE cock’s clear voice into the clearer air Where westward far I roam, Mounts with a thrill of hope, Falls with a sigh of home. A rural sentry, he from farm and field The coming morn descries, And, mankind’s bugler, wakes The camp of enterprise. He sings the morn upon the westward hills Strange and […]...
29. Lois Spears Here lies the body of Lois Spears, Born Lois Fluke, daughter of Willard Fluke, Wife of Cyrus Spears, Mother of Myrtle and Virgil Spears, Children with clear eyes and sound limbs (I was born blind) I was the happiest of women As wife, mother and housekeeper, Caring for my loved ones, And making my home […]...
30. Gazing at the Sacred Peak For all this, what is the mountain god like? An unending green of lands north and south: From ethereal beauty Creation distills There, yin and yang split dusk and dawn. Swelling clouds sweep by. Returning birds Ruin my eyes vanishing. One day soon, At the summit, the other mountains will be Small enough to hold, […]...
31. Population Drifts NEW-MOWN hay smell and wind of the plain made her A woman whose ribs had the power of the hills in Them and her hands were tough for work and there Was passion for life in her womb. She and her man crossed the ocean and the years that Marked their faces saw them haggling […]...
32. Lament for Eorl the Young Where now is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing? Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow; The days […]...
33. The Wind tapped like a tired Man The Wind tapped like a tired Man And like a Host “Come in” I boldly answered entered then My Residence within A Rapid footless Guest To offer whom a Chair Were as impossible as hand A Sofa to the Air No Bone had He to bind Him His Speech was like the Push Of numerous […]...
34. The Excesses Of God Is it not by his high superfluousness we know Our God? For to be equal a need Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling Rainbows over the rain And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows On the domes of deep sea-shells, And make the necessary embrace of breeding Beautiful also as fire, Not even […]...
35. Story Tired of a landscape known too well when young: The deliberate shallow hills, the boring birds Flying past rocks; tired of remembering The village children and their naughty words, He abandoned his small holding and went South, Recognised at once his wished-for lie In the inhabitants’ attractive mouth, The church beside the marsh, the hot […]...
36. The Beautiful Sun Beautiful Sun! with thy golden rays, To God, the wise Creator, be all praise; For thou nourisheth all the creation, Wherever there is found to be animation. Without thy heat we could not live, Then praise to God we ought to give; For thou makest the fruits and provisions to grow, To nourish all creatures […]...
37. The West Wind IT’S a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds’ cries; I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes. For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills. And April’s in the west wind, and daffodils. It’s a fine land, the west land, for hearts as tired as mine, […]...
38. By Broad Potomac's Shore 1 BY broad Potomac’s shore-again, old tongue! (Still uttering-still ejaculating-canst never cease this babble?) Again, old heart so gay-again to you, your sense, the full flush spring returning; Again the freshness and the odors-again Virginia’s summer sky, pellucid blue and silver, Again the forenoon purple of the hills, Again the deathless grass, so noiseless, soft […]...
39. When The Sun Come After Rain WHEN the sun comes after rain And the bird is in the blue, The girls go down the lane Two by two. When the sun comes after shadow And the singing of the showers, The girls go up the meadow, Fair as flowers. When the eve comes dusky red And the moon succeeds the sun, […]...
40. Psalm 90 part 1 v.1-5 C. M. Man frail, and God eternal. Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home. Under the shadow of thy throne Thy saints have dwelt secure; Sufficient is thine arm alone, And our defence is sure. Before the hills […]...